This novel, published in 1898, tells the story of four carefree young women, all physically indistinguishable from white women, off for a vacation at a Massachusetts resort - a vacation that ultimately leads to their struggle for salvation and their commitment to Christian service. Combining conventions from spritual autobiography with those of the sentimental novel, the book sets off on an evangelical mission aimed at showing readers how they should live.

"The Changing Same" examines defining moments in African American women's fiction and its reception: the "Women's Era" of the 1890s, the Harlem Renaissance, and the "New Black Renaissance" of the 1970s and 1980s. Deborah McDowell maps this history in readings of Emma Dunham Kelley, Frances E. W. Harper, Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Sherley Anne Williams. She examines representations of slavery, sexuality, and homoeroticism; the reception of African American women's fiction in the 1980s; and African American feminist writing in the "Age of Theory."

Of One Blood is the last of four novels written by Pauline Hopkins. She is considered by some to be "the most prolific African-American woman writer and the most influential literary editor of the first decade of the twentieth century, though she is one of the lesser known literary figures of the much lauded Harlem Renaissance. Of One Blood first appeared in serial form in Colored American Magazine in the November and December 1902 and the January 1903 issues of the publication, during the four-year period that Hopkins served as its editor.
Hopkins tells the story of...

Seven noted scholars examine slave narratives and the topic of slavery in American literature, from Frederick Douglass's Narrative (1845) to Shelley Anne Williams' Dessa Rose (1984).